Fantastic Mystery: Lights Out! by Donald Bain 5 of 5 Stars

Donald Bain is one of my favorite writers. He's penned most of the Murder She Wrote mystery series, and many of the "Margaret Truman mysteries." He also wrote several books under his own name and I just enjoyed one called "Lights Out" published in 2014. As the promo said, it's a   bold money-making scheme that spins wildly out of control in this absorbing thriller!

  Sadly, Donald Bain passed away a couple of years ago, but the books he left behind are all brilliant. I love his style of writing short, pointed chapters. That will always grab me in reading a book. In short, this book will grab you from the start and make you like the main character Carlton Smythe, and as he makes bad decisions, you cringe, but the author is brilliant in making the reader continue to be somewhat sympathetic. The end totally surprised me. 5 of 5 stars!! 

ABOUT THE BOOK: Five major blackouts have paralyzed the USA since the late 1950s. The sixth will occur in a few months' time.

At the age of fifty-three, married Canadian engineer Carlton Smythe meets a mysterious woman in a Buenos Aires bar - and falls head over heels in love for the first time in his life. Desperate to find the funds to escape his loveless marriage to Cynthia and embark on a new life in Argentina with the beautiful Gina Ellanado, Smythe devises an audacious money-making scheme, brilliant in its simplicity and boldness. But to pull it off, he will need to do business with some wholly undesirable criminal elements, including reputed local Mafia boss Dominick Martone and some USA counterparts. And that's when things start to spin wildly out of control.

Fantastic Mystery! Murder She Wrote: Murder in Red

I'm a huge fan of the television series "Murder She Wrote" starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer Jessica Fletcher. Since the series reached it's end in the early 1990s (I have them all on DVD), novels based on the show were published.
   The original author of more than 45 novels, was Donald Bain. Bain passed away in the last couple of years and the latest novels are written by Jon Land and "Jessica Fletcher." Land has done an incredible job picking up the title and honors the great writing style of Donald Bain. There are now 50 Murder She Wrote novels, and I've read 48 of them- they are all fantastic (I keep them and re-read them).
  The latest paperback, "Murder She Wrote: Murder in Red" is no exception. It's fantastic!!!  I normally read a book in about 2 weeks. I finished this one in 5 days - I hated putting it down and often fell asleep reading it late into the evenings!  There are so many twists and turns in this book, you won't figure them all out until they are revealed in the last chapter or two.
  5 of 5 stars! This book is a must-read mystery.
- Rob

Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher

ABOUT THE BOOK: In the latest entry in this USA Today bestselling series, Jessica loses a loved one to unnatural causes and sets her sights on the mysterious local hospital before more people wind up dead on arrival...

Jessica Fletcher's favorite gin rummy partner, Mimi Van Dorn, checks into the brand-new Clifton Care Partners, a private hospital that's just opened up shop in town, for a simple procedure—one that leads tragically, and inexplicably, to her death. Seeking justice in her inimitable fashion, Jessica decides to pursue her own investigation on the hospital and its shadowy business dealings.

On the trail of what initially appears to be medical malpractice, Jessica digs deeper and learns her friend was actually a victim of something far more sinister. Death is bad for business, but murder is even worse, and Jessica will find plenty of both as she races to bring down Clifton Care Partners before someone else flatlines...